Sunday, October 01, 2006

Abortion: The Practical Consequences

There have been almost three million abortions performed in Canada since the legalization thereof in 1969.

If you accept the premise of our cultural elites that this is a settled issue, of no particular moral or practical importance for reflection or reconsideration, then that number is an irrelevant statistic.

But we're not here to accept their premises at face value.

If the moral questions trouble you, consider the practical questions first.

Three million native-born Canadians were not born who could have been. Most of them now would be productive citizens, contributing their talents and labour to Canadian society. Many of them in turn would now have had children of their own.

To replace them, we have had to import millions of immigrants who otherwise could be contributing to their own native lands. Many of these immigrants have been lured here using a cruel bait and switch, with promises of ready work in their professional fields, only to have their qualifications rejected and able to find only unskilled or menial work--the kind of work that supposedly is too good for native-born Canadians to do.

Many of these same people have been actively discouraged from assimilating into the broader Canadian culture in favour of remaining segregated from Canadian society as separate tiles on our multicultural mosaic. Indeed, our education system and popular culture teaches them to denigrate the history and traditions of their host nation, where they are not simply ignored.

The demographic effects on our society have become too obvious to ignore, though our cultural elites strive mightily to ignore them.

Would the divisive ethnic politics played so often in this country be as frequently or as damagingly played, if we had not had to take in so many immigrants in the first place?

Would we have raised a generation of Canadians whose only connection to the country is an accident of birth, who remain loyal only to old tribal and sectarian loyalties, and who consider Canada a safe staging area for fighting old battles and a possible theatre for new ones?

Think also of the economic consequences.

Millions of productive citizens, creating economic prosperity and contributing tax revenue to the public treasury, are not in the economy who could have been.

Again, we have had to import cheap foreign labour and depend increasingly on women working outside the home in their prime childbearing years, with the knock-on effects of driving real wages down and also driving down tax revenue as well.

The children who were not born, and the children who were of course not born to them, could have sustained the social safety net on which Canadians pride themselves, without fears of impending collapse under the weight of obligations for which there are not taxpayers to help meet.

We are now setting up the foundations of a generational conflict in which the younger will see the older as an insupportable economic burden. As the older generation liquidated much of the younger out of self-interest, so the younger will liquidate the surviving older out of self-interest, as the unspoken but instinctual revenge for the hecatomb imposed on it.

Legalized unrestricted abortion has created a fundamental breach in the social contract between generations. Every child today knows that his parents could have had him killed as a matter of convenience; every parent now fears that they may face the same fate in their senescene.

No people can survive a war of parents against their children.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What if you found out when you were a kid that your parents would have prefered that you never lived? How would it affect your life?

Would becoming a productive member of society be a priority?

wilson said...

teresa, ask those millions who were adopted. My adopted son is thrilled to be alive. And at 24 he is a very successfull oilfield technologist.

My best friend wanted her daughter to have an abortion (at age 17), she chose NOT to, and that boy is now 20 and the light of my friends life, her world revolves around him.

here is a list of some famous adopted people.
Kings, poets, politicians, artists, scientists... ...check it out.
http://www.dil.aber.ac.uk/dils/Research/RFocus9/HTML_SL.HTM

Anonymous said...

My comment has yet to be posted, so I'll try another post. If it does come up, loyalist, please delete one of them. Thanks.

My cousin was adopted and it certainly wasn't because her mother didn't want her. Home life was very bad and essentially by giving her daughter away, she was saving her. Her mother wanted her to have a good life.

I'm talking about people who don't want their children to exist. In your example with your friend, you said that the grandparent didn't want the child. Although grandparents are a wonderful addition to the family, they aren't necessary to create a meaningful life, unless the grandparents have custody, in which case I would refer to them as parents. In this example, the mother wanted to have the child, which is not the situation I'm raising.

You found a remarkable list of important people who have been adopted. Do you have stats on how many children are still in the adoption system? Who haven't found a good home? Who the system has failed? What happens to these kids?

Putting every unwanted child up for adoption is not the answer. There aren't enough people that want to take in these children.

Anonymous said...

>> teresa: "How would it affect your life?"

It would probably have had an influence of some sort, of some degree.

However, the key word is "life".

One would have a life to be affected (or not) by whatever degree.

Abortion is final, there is no other way it would later affect the life of the child other than to end future affects -- of all degrees.

teresa, surely you would not suggest that abortion is for the child's sake. That the mother's (and presumably the father's) choice to discard a fellow human being, an own child, is laudably empathetic and very charitable -- and pragmatic, too.

Anonymous said...

I'm certainly not saying that everyone who is questioning having a child should abort it. I believe if you have the emotional and mental capacity to raise a child well, you should do so, no matter if the child was a mistake. That may not have been clear in my last posts.

In some circumstances, an abortion is for everyones sake.

What point is a life filled with pain and abuse and being set up for failure? Living with parent(s) who grow to hate you, and neglect you? No acceptable values being taught in the face of society?

What good will this child be when they grow up? Will they have the skills to be useful? Or will they just be a drain on resources?

I'm not a supporter of every single abortion that has happened. And do think that there should be a time frame on when an abortion can be performed. But they should be able to be performed.

Anonymous said...

teresa: "What good will this child be when they grow up? Will they have the skills to be useful? Or will they just be a drain on resources?"

On that basis would you also question the right of adult welfare recipients to continue to live? Or adults on disability pensions?

I would expect not.

What makes the difference, for you, in the case of a younger human being?

Surely it is not usefulness versus the potential be a drain on society.

Your criteria for protecting the life of a human being is not too clear, but it seems to be based on a series of "what-ifs" and "might-be's". Or maybe I am misreading your comments. I realize only so much can be said in a comment box.

I am not trying to pin you to the wall, teresa, just asking for further clarification of how you would draw the line when, as you said, "In some circumstances, an abortion is for everyones sake."

Does everyone also include the discarded child?

Anonymous said...

A short answer to the question about welfare, is yes, I am against it. A person can figure out how to fund their own life if they are physically able to, and if they can't be bothered, then I really don't give a damn what happens to them.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to answer regarding the disabled adult situation. I've been thinking about it for a while now and one part of me feels the same way as I do about welfare, but another is a bit horrified that I can think that way about someone trying to live with something out of thier control. so I don't know. Maybe it boils down to how wanted and loved the disabled person is. I just don't know.

But back to children. When the child has no chance for a good life, and when the parents have no want for the child, that is when an abortion should take place. of course, if this happens more than once, there should most definately be another answer than repeated abortions, such as sterilization.

I think the world has become overly politically correct and failed. You hear about a pretty young girl accidentally shot and practically the entire country goes into mourning, and when a homeless person is accidentally shot, odds are most people never find out, or if they do, most people shrug and get back to work.

If all human lives are valued equally, no matter who they are, and what they do, shouldn't the reaction to both of these be the exact same? And yet you express disbelief when I apply that to unborn children. If it is known that their lives are going to be like the homeless man, why is it so important that they live? Who really cares?